Wesley Autrey receiving a bronze medallion,New York's top award for civic achievement.Photograph: Bebeto Matthews/APSo who needs superheroes, anyway? Not the people of New York, it would seem.

This is "the week of heroes" in the city, its police commissioner has said, after a series of selfless events which have thrilled even New York's most jaded residents.

It all began on Tuesday, when 50-year-old construction worker Wesley Autrey leaped onto a Manhattan subway track as a train approached to save the life of a man who had fallen after suffering a seizure.

Unable to pull him up in time, Mr Autrey placed his own body over that of the other man, holding him down in the low trench between the tracks as the train carriages passed millimetres above his head.

"We're OK down here," he yelled, in true Hollywood style, as the train stopped above, onlookers' screams turning to applause.

Since then Mr Autrey has been showered with rewards, including a mayoral medallion, $10,000 from Donald Trump and - perhaps less welcome - a year's free subway travel.

Less obviously heroic but still dramatic, the next day three New York police officers delivered a woman's baby on the platform of a subway station in Brooklyn, a welcome piece of good PR for a force heavily criticised for killing an unarmed man on his wedding day in a hail of 50 bullets.

Then yesterday, two men passing a building in the Bronx seized their own chance to become heroes after they spotted a toddler clinging to the edge of a fire escape four stories up.

The three-year-old boy, it transpired later, had crawled out of a window when his babysitter briefly took her eyes off him.

As the todder's grip weakened and people inside the building screamed, Julio Gonzalez and Pedro Nevarez positioned themselves underneath.

In another movie-like twist, the falling boy hit Mr Nevarez in the chest so hard he was knocked off balance, only to bounce into Mr Gonzalez's arms, unhurt except for a cut to his forehead.

The moral of the story, according to Mr Autrey, is: "Good things happen when you do good."

If that's OK with traditionally sceptical New Yorkers, then surely it's OK for the rest of us?